The Unreasonable Man

Way too much… for cell phone service.

And the industry likes that. They make it very difficult to identify low-cost options. Ever tried to identify the lowest-cost plan? Impossible.

So Industry Canada created a calculator to help people choose.

So the industry did not like that.

So they complained to the minister.

So the minister killed the calculator.

Clear? Here’s the story: http://thestar.com/article/688547

Apple is getting annoying. The perpetual queue in the store; the need to “book an appointment” to ask the “Geniuses” (cringe!) even the simplest questions; the unavailability of stores where you want them (in your own town would be nice); the inability to call (you “book a callback” for Apple to call you back at its convenience, not yours): all these point to Apple getting too big for its boots.

All th eabove hit me today. Call from the experts in the USA who told me the wrong thing; lady telling me I would “have to” make an appointment and I would “have to” come back, after I just spent 45 minutes in traffic getting there (having been directed to do so by the Apple tech guys on the “callback”): intensely annoying.

And if they annoy me, they annoy others. I call the demise of Apple before it even grows to its full potential.

Yves Klein Blue - Polka. Heard in the new Mitsubishi ad. Found on the ‘net in <30 seconds. Their music is great… a mix of The Only Ones, The Stray Cats, Feist, The Fratellis and Razorlight all in one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=AU&hl=en-GB&v=rQ6tKGFnemU

And yes, about this song - as befits a punk band with these influences, they are certainly drug lyrics. Things like:

“Oh and if you wanna lose your frown / Or your name or even your face / Lick up a dream that seemingly sings with whistling neon death”.

“Sid was at the gates of dawn / And Jimmy said ride the snake / So we bent our spoons and howled at the moon to find what science replaced. / And it turns out it ain’t that much / Though I may have missed it in the haze / Oh it drips in your mind / And fills up your eyes / And you’ll never be the same.”

“But if you’re ever coming down / Or if you ever take too much / Remember that’s much better than never ever getting enough”.

Um, as one even older than “a boring forty-something year old”, I might argue that that is a mistaken viewpoint, guys… let’s put it down to your life experience. A powerful song.

Here’s why I connect with this music: look at the background graphic at their site:

http://www.yveskleinblue.com/

Every single poster on the wall -presumably their influences- is music I love: Lou Reed, David Bowie, Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Nirvana, The Cure… much from the 1970s. Their parents’ music, perhaps?

And they quote Jack Kerouac. What’s not to love.

Ironic, that a band that sings about “boring fortysomethings” appears to be aming squarely at them!

Even The Economist is saying paper is dead: in particular, newspapers are dead, and they will be online and they will charge per article for reading.

I don’t buy it. Pun intended.

Newspapers and The Economist can be conveniently read in bed, in the bathroom, in the car, over lunch, on the train, and in waiting rooms. Electrical devices, not so much. And they will require battery charging (what a pain: I charge 1,000 items a year ).

Also, newspapers and magazines broaden your view by giving you things to read that you would not otherwise read. My kids’ generation reads McNews. Not much background knowledge there. I cannot believe knowledge will disappear: it never does. We’ll find a way.

Granted, electronic paper would be less wasteful. But a screen or a book reader to read stuff? I do not buy it.

As for charging per article.. this is anathema. You don’t charge per article. It’s the wrong motivator: it motivates to not read. And also - only a few dollars a month - yeah, but for every site you ever go to that means hundreds of new dollars in spending every month. It just won’t happen.

Where I agree: once electronic paper comes of age, we will see changes. No more smearing ink on dead trees.

Until that time: newspaper and magazines please. Even if I don’t always agree with them.

When I hook up my camera to my Mac, why does it take an hour (seemingly) to start downloading the pictures?

The laborious sequence is:

1. Plug in camera using USB cable
2. Turn it on
3. In the download manager, click on the unchangeable default location of “Pictures. movies and folders”
4. Select “other”
5. Select Desktop
6. Click on “new folder”
7. Name the new folder (I like “date plus some words”)
8. Confirm
9. Click on “Open”
10. Select “Download All”

Every time! I would please like to replace steps 3-10 by one (or better, no) steps. Since I do this several timesevery day, there is a lot of profit to be gained here.. any ideas?

..at least if they are as clueless as The Globe and Mail, Canada’s national paper.

To read an article online, after the first few weeks you need to pay. $4.95 for one article, which is then available for 30 days for you. Yes you read that right: an entire newspaper is a dollar delivered to your home, but one article, no matter how small, is $4.95 - for 30 days.

And it makes no difference if you already subscribe to the paper.

Clueless is too kind a word. This type of wishful thinking shows they are desperate, but it will only make it worse.

Meanwhile, excuse me while I go to Google cache for my article.

…all the time….

And it is not just me, having issues with my 1Ds MkIII and 1D MkIII bodies:

Peter Gregg’s post

That soft face is totally recognisable - I get this all the time. Will Canon help by redesigning/fixing the 1D bodies? I hope so.. having invested $25,000 into Canon equipment I think it would be nice.

Reminder: here is a sample of mine. Shot with one focus point, lock mode, aiming at a contrasty area, at fast shutted speeds - but wide open at f/1.4. Some shots good, some soft.

..and I do not mean “batch”. Printing is terribly idiotic. As I said earlier, it is like TCP/IP in 1993 or email in 1988. When you want to print quality, you are faced with things like this:

• You need a degree to know how to do it. An arts degree.
• Print from Lightroom and you get to tell the system your print settings and  paper type at least twice.
• People bandy about clichés like “you need a spider” without knowing what they mean (if your camera is set right and you print a correct file from camera through PC to printer, the PC’s colours have no effect unless you change your photo).
• You cannot print on Epson paper using a  Canon printer since there is no profile and Epson and Canon will not provide one.
• But you cannot find Canon paper anywhere.
• Print people do not understand that the size of your image has nothing to do with its DPI. The size is in pixels. If my image in 3000×2000 pixels wide, that determines its quality and the size I can print it at. Whether I save it as a 30DPI image or 3 million DPI image has zero effect on that.
• Even when you have a spider, use th3 right paper, and the right ICC profiles, you get crappy colour. I have images here that were shot right and that look right on eth Mac, but where faces look blue when I print them, using a Canon printer, Canon paper, and the Canon ICC profile for that paper, and yes I have bloody well calibrated my screen, yes with a spider, not that it matters.
• Printer manufacturers do not understand anything beyond the basics.

$5,000 and 3 months later I can still not consistently print an image. In fact I had it right until Canon told me to delete the print profiles - then, even after reinstalling them, never again a good print. And all the advice one gets is useless. Use a spire. Install the ICC profiles. Use Relative Colorimetric, even though no-one knows what that means.

Grrr! How difficult is it to not print a face blue?

Bye bye mapquest. Google maps is SO much better fro travel directions, it’s not funny. AJAX, AI: you have to hand it to the PhDs again.

Short tech note: I moved all my domains except this one to 1and1.com and moved my mail to google apps - recommended on both counts.